Give Me Space !!! #NishaJamVwal

When a love-story culminates in marriage its satisfying all around. But this one, the society Chinese whispers had touted as the clichéd "Marriage made in heaven".  I was skeptical, heaven isn't very reachable for mortals. 

When two persons in love marry, it's for them at least,  the culmination of their own storybook romance. But there was this tale that was a much conversed social affair. Some called it a match made in heaven. Surely, I thought, an exaggeration, when I was attending one of the many “do’s” the "love-bird" pair used to whirl through. But undeniably, the husband was suave, handsome, known to be intellectual and could there be anything lacking?!  Any skepticism left was quite swept away with his charm and attentive courtesies when he spoke to me! The bride- she was beautiful, stylish and much feted by society. I was equally charmed by her affability. 

A year or so had passed. Again at an evening they were likely to be at, I looked forward to meeting them. Was I surprised? The handsome knight met me with almost a cursory greeting as though he hardly knew me! But we had spent a delightful time over the conversation? I was offended, and although the beautiful wife somewhat assuaged matters with her friendly hearty greeting and chat, I pointedly shortened the interlude and moved away.  

Click below to read on...........................

Toxic Negative Relationships- Get Out Of Them #NishaJamVwal

Breathe, Live, Laugh a Little More

It is my personal experience, to continue with a friendship or relationship with a negative person - who either blames you, is aggressive at the rise of any miscommunication, cannot control themselves when excited or agitated and is generally quick to misunderstand than make an effort to understand- is a losing proposition. Contrary to your wishful belief, time, kids, maturity does not heal or improve manipulative aggression.

With a slew of only good friendships and equations behind me, I find it hard to cut off a friendship chord easily even when a relationship is not going positively. Part of me always works at it to salvage it, thinking it a challenge in working things and not copping out. But the smarter way to unclutter life is to weed out these ‘toxic relationships’. Just like you edit your wardrobe and storage, with every year of growing older, you need to edit life fearlessly in order to become lighter and free up time for life investing pursuits.

Click below to read on...........................

Separate Bedrooms #NishaJamVwal

 It was yesterday that I stumbled onto an Instagram post by a cousin and close friend saying that separate bedrooms for a married couple or partners who choose to live together are a relationship bending route that shatters taboos and ‘works wonders for intimacy and sanity’. I am mixed in my views about this growing trend. The post speaks about how it also allows for hobbies, privacy, and space. My first reaction to reading this is that the entire day most couples engage in own thing anyway and that bonding is oftentimes only at night. Intimate time together in a ‘cocoon’ like space cut off from the rest of the universe to grow your relationship is time bond in the busy schedules a couple normally keep.  So you have the entire rest of your time to pursue a hobby or a preoccupation in a den or an office in the time away from each other.

Click below to read on...........................

NiceGirls Finish Last !!!

Sugar and Spice and all Things Nice?

Recently I came across a case of separation for reasons that were jaw-dropping strange! As I heard out this friend the case got curiouser and curiouser!!  “Rishi, let me get this clear", I asked, "You broke up because she was just too darn nice and too much a wifey little thing?" He took great verbosity and some time to get across what seemed an oxymoron when we’re speaking matrimony! "You mean you didn't want a wife who was a good wife candidate?" I asked, understandably befuddled. Between the no-no's and yes yesses and "not like that’s” what I deciphered was that a man can feel differently toward an intended wife and a steady girlfriend.

This difference is the romantically stimulating-desirable girl as opposed to the caring-too-much girl, and the latter in a suffocating kind of way of being fussed upon. I’d never have believed it, but there is a situation where being loved too much can also be a problem!? Seemingly so!

“Listen, there needs to be some fun and flair, and a little playful space. Even uncertainty that makes for pizazz. Quit the blandness lady. I think I prefer celebratory champagne over the goody-goody glass of milk.” Candid he was and it was then that a well-known saying came to my mind- “nice girls finish last’!

Click to Read On-

When Insecurity Raises Its Ugly Head!

I'm around your side, shall I drop by for a cuppa?" I telephoned my friend in the suburbs?"

Please come soon Nisha!

-I need the company, some advice and the strongly caffeinated cuppa!" She replied. I found her bleary-eyed and disheveled though it was two in the afternoon. "Got to bed at four o'clock. We argued and argued " 

She thought he'd been philandering with that b-----* at that dinner, and he'd been exasperated- placating, reasoning, and finally apologizing so they could ‘kiss and make up’.

They are a contemporary twosome in a live-in relationship. What I learned was that this sleeping at three and four I the night was a regular feature of their time together. And arguing and fighting? It was not necessarily about perceived roving eyes alone! It could be some small thing that had not been to her expectations or something said that conveyed wrong intent or anything amiss in his demeanor that went contrary to her mood even. I gathered all this, half by her own admission and the rest by insights that didn't need an Hercule Poiret to decipher.

Click to read the entire article-

Marrying Mr Moneybags

Moneybags

Was that a rock? I couldn’t get my eyes off her fifty-carat diamond on her hand. She’d just stepped off her Rolls Royce to join me to a reunion lunch. It’s so delightful when you can meet a school friend and bond after ages, the connect is sans all façade and pretense. So she’d really done well for herself I happily commented. A tiny shadow crossed her face, and it wasn’t long until she confided about a life with all the trappings and an okay marriage but a marriage without much friendship, companionship, and shared moments of fun, laughter, movies, foodie dates and even the sharing of some happy camaraderie.

There are stories and stories of marriages to wealthy gentlemen, snidely referred to as 'moneybags' but I have seen the veneer lose its sheen after a span of flashing the rock on the finger, the rows of Jimmy Choo’s, Prada’s et al If money is the only thing going for it. You guessed it. Life can be lonely, empty and dissatisfying when the only consideration for the marriage has been money- as you look on at a laughing young couple surrendering their monthly instalment on the 'Godrej' Sofa-cum-bed, having a bhelpuri dinner and catching a bus home, because it’s the end of the month! 

Click below to read on...........................

Love At First Site! Does It Really Happen #NishaJamVwal

“I could not tell you if I loved you the first moment I saw you, or if it was the second or third or fourth. But I remember the first moment I looked at you walking toward me and realized that somehow the rest of the world seemed to vanish when I was with you.” 

The savant observer of human life and raconteur in ‘Dil Dhadkne Do’ looks on  as protagonist Ranveer Singh sets eyes on Anushka Sharma swimming across the pool. She glances back and it’s a long enduring moment as their eyes lock in a riveting awareness of each other. His droopy eyes perk up as Pluto the raconteur takes in the palpably electric moment as he wryly remarks ‘yeh pehli nazar mei pyar hota kya hai? Kisi ko dekha, brain mei kuch chemical changes aye, nas nas mei khoon ki rafter tez hui, sare badan mei lehare si uthne lagi. To dil ki dhadkan bhi thoda fast ho gayi! 


He explains sagely, that in the beginning there are very few words, it’s all about stolen glances and chemical reaction.

Click below to read on...........................

My Secrets Unraveled! Complexites of the Mother Daughter Love-Hate Bond!!!

Mum's the Word

Through this article I'll share some tiny secrets. About what I believe complicates relationships of girls sometimes with their mum's. About what I think is ideal in a mother child relationship & about my fantasy Mum!

It is not an unknown fact that mother and daughter relationships are infused with some ups and downs and difference in opinion. But to take it to the level that Indrani Mukherjea has done, is definitely a shock to all people that knew the family, however distantly. Does that throw the relationship of a mother and child into question where one looks askance at the purest relationship that a mother has with her child? I think not. This would have to be a rare exception, with a mentally imbalanced person who could kill her daughter in cold blood. And yet the relationship of a mother and daughter is indeed layered and composite. The Indrani incident 

Click below to read on...........................

Abusive Woman Battered Man

Do Men Get Abused In Relationships Too? 
That is a naive question!

My friend Sanjay is miserable. I try to analyze why a man who has it all- cars, homes, friends who love him, looks, education just about everything I can think of is so downcast? 

“It’s my wife, she’s always ‘offhand’ and nasty, nagging, and ticking me off, sometimes publically to my acute embarrassment. Over the years I find it getting worse. The problem is I love her and I’ve been married to her for so long I don’t want to end the relationship.” 

You thought only women had the raw end of the stick in relationships? The emotionally ravaged and dependent underdogs are not always women, as feminists would have us believe. I have been observing the tables slowly turning, with women becoming independent, assertive, and nearly like new converts with growing aggression flaunting their ‘rights’. But rights come with a responsibility- that of responsibility and composure.

Click below to read on...........................

Suicide, Councelling & All About SURVIVAL & CELEBRATING LIFE

A student of NIFT recently (allegedly) committed suicide. 
Jiah Khan committed suicide some years ago. 
I clearly remember the day attractive model and my good friend Viveka Bhabajee had planned meeting me on Tuesday for a swim. Fun, smiling always, slim attractive Viveka.  I never saw any expression of sadness or pain in her, even though we spoke often and were fond of each other. She did confide her break-up with me, but never did she sound defeated, Infact she started her own event company and decided to work alone. The day of the appointed swim she didn’t show up and just a few days later I was horrified to learn that she’d hung herself to death. 

Before that fellow compeer Nafisa Joseph- self-assured and composed, we compeered many corporate evenings, before which I would be backstage looking at my cue cards.  Nafisa was happy to chatter ‘happily’ on the phone. Not long after one such event, I heard of the eerie incident of her hanging herself.

Click below to read on...........................

Good Manners Are Not Passe' Or Uncool

Good Manners Are Not Obsolete?

Catherine Zeta Jones kids says her kids are well mannered because she gives them stars on a chart in the kitchen for good behavior. It is of the utmost importance to her and she works hard on not only their performance at school but also good manners. They get stars and stickers for being polite and kind and doing chores and being helpful. When they have enough stars they go to a store and pick something out within the budget she sets aside. This sets me thinking about politeness. Is it obsolete and forgotten in the rush and bustle of today?

 I look around me, and even within me and see a great paucity of taking out the time to ask about people, spending a few minutes in conversation before ‘getting to the point’ and ‘cutting to the chase’. The rush and hurry is all consuming in a performance oriented competitive world, but trust me, politeness and care count.

Click below to read on...........................

Learn To Enjoy Your Friends Success?

Do you take your friends success with happiness? Should envy & competitive spirit be the stuff a friendship is made of?

Maybe growth and maturity is the ability to applaud your friends. They will enjoy your success too! Positive brings positive?

When a woman is able to appreciate another woman, it speaks of self-assurance & inner worth- and I don't mean pouring effusively.  I mean genuine heartfelt celebration of each other! Often people find it easy to praise & be nice to a 'poor thing' or someone where there is agenda & sycophancy. But to applaud and give credit to a triumphant and self-assured a person is not easy. No one is too big, too great, or too famous to receive appreciation & genuine heartfelt acclaim and it is nice to appreciate and say motivating things to human beings and to be part of their success. You can encourage and bring out the best in your friend rather than allowing envy and jealously take over which has the potential to form a dark cloud that bodes poorly for you and your friendship. Positive affirmation and seeking out the best in someone can transform their lives for the better. It is a power vested in each of us to be that inspiring person in another’s life.

Click below to read on...........................

Rare Are Those That Care. Life Beyond Herds & Hordes!

Life Beyond Herds & Hordes! 

Bad times

Who doesn’t have them?

Ask me? I know! I’ve had many

Pretty pictures talk lies

They tell untruths to the skies

But what is the truth

Unfurled only by the sleuth

Them that care or then stare!

Laughing together brittle tinkling of glass

Tears in darkness alone alas!

Come out of it stronger in the light

Sparkle after storms

Tougher sunshine nimble bright.

Click below to read on...........................

My Book Of Life #NishaJamVwal

Life is about GoingOn
Regardless!
Ask Me, I Know...
It busts your chops
But
It picks up somewhere along the way
& you don't even know when & how it happened
But you're sort of in the game
Getting the plot
& cracking the code
Somehow
Someday

Click below to read on...........................

Love & Lovers! Should There Be Rules To Relationships?

HOW TO MAKE. A WIN-WIN WAR

Matchy-match, rules and regulations, discipline- these were things for the older brigade. Growing up I never felt that one should adhere to any regimen or rules. 

Infact I nearly bucked at the thought of such shackles in my life. And yet when I grew up into life’s challenges I realized how valuable it is to work by some basic principles like setting out some guidelines when entering a relationship.

Lovers tiffs, husband- wife spats, mother-daughter quarrels father-son battles or sibling ferocity! Some of the most love-laden relationships as these are, we all know. But we also know that these are also dotted with the most painful and hurtful moments, albeit often very transient. When they happen, good sense seems to have completely fled out of the window. 

The environs are struck as if by thunder and lightning.  Attacks, allegations, bruising words, ego clashes and even temporarily the desire to demolish the other, reign rampant, leaving in their wake tears bruised psyches and wounded souls.  Sometimes the outcome may be enduring or even permanently disruptive. After the winds have blown their course, anger does dissolve and the ego does float back to its accustomed seat. Incredible as it might have seemed, love, hopefully, once more prevails

CLICK TO READ MORE..........

Date Night

Date Night

Maybe it was a statement that a friend made- she was surprised at a couple phoning each other during day. Or snide behind -the back comments that I overheard about a couple intimately dining together- 

"Maybe they don't have friends? Or then they surely lack an adequate social circle."

 Is it too extraordinary then to go on a date after you get hitched or married? I mean what happened to all the love and intimacy of the run-up to marriage? It happens to an extent  (but not hundred percent) in the Indian context where earlier generations viewed marriage as bringing up children and attending to material advance and serious family business, wary of the lighter aspects. Perhaps the times demanded it. 

Click below to read on...........................

Understanding Misunderstanding!!!

We seemed to disagree on most things and I would never have believed that we’d be friends one day. 




Some relationships are just so full of misunderstandings and this was one such interaction. From the time I met Feroza it had been one thing after another. And yet after a few years I found we had a kindov good understanding and got along without a glitch. I surprised myself and set thinking about how this had happened and what had transpired. Wasn't it true that either there was a chemistry or then there were people you just kept away from because there seemed to be miscommunication and lack of a synchronicity? How wrong I was. 

The Social Thing- of handbags & diamonds

‘A Social Cause’

There are sniggers in the kitchen ~ " bahot comedy hota hai jab bhi Madam party se wapis aata hai , Saab to chuha ka mafik newspaper ka peechhey chhup kar baith gayaa hai!" ~ Rosie's merriment would have increased vastly, had she viewed Madam Dudlani fuming smoke from her ears and jiggling her prosperity-laden love handles in frustrated fury! Their entire NY luxury trip had lost its flavor.  

The evening had turned a painful 'flop'!  She'd waved her hands in all variety of dance 'mudras' to display the rock sized adornment on her finger, with mention of "Tiffany" at every drop of a sentence, the applause and envy she'd dreamed of had been rudely upstaged by Silky Sood’s new silver-mauve acquisition glinting brazenly in the drive. She couldn't pronounce 'Lamborghini' but had that stopped her from tom-tomming reference to the cussed object? The Dudlani's evening had turned murkily sour! Paul the driver summed up the evening –"Aapan-log much jolly! Ek Sunday mutton curry, ek Sunday chicken curry, ek Sunday fish curry, ek Sunday 'aeig'-curry, phir salary- day and 'fiqar-not' ka bottle! Kamti paisa, kamti tension!"

Click below to read on...........................

To Marry Or Not Marry Is the Question Raageshwari tells us All About Marriage!

Love, Marriage, Making A Home! Raageshwari share's what it Is Like To Take The Plunge Much Later In Life
There's Hope For All Of You Who're Picky....

We had nearly given up on Raageshwari. It was so many years and she didn't look like she was in a hurry to get married, and wasn't getting any younger as you can imagine. It’s also sometimes a little tough to be a girl in India, I mean there is pressure to marry early and how do you hold out until you’re certain you wish to walk the aisle? These were my thoughts as I reminisced the days before she had met her beau, as I sat in the 'pandal' (the wedding canopy) looking at Sudhanshu and Raageshwari. 

They looked into each other’s eyes dreamily while doing the phera’s- the wedding ceremony- at some two in the morning. We were throwing flowers on the couple, and I was trying to calculate Rag’s age, 40 something I was guessing? So quite obviously there was pressure to walk the aisle?

Today, happily married, sipping tea in her swanky London apartment Raag's shares “I always truly took pressure very lovingly as I know that the thought is well intended. I took relationships very seriously and knew in my heart that I will surely find someone who will synergise with my sensibilities.”

“It’s interesting that I participated in Bigg Boss to give a boost to my career (Or so I thought) And as fate would have it, my email and phone was flooded only with marriage proposals. So I’m glad that people wanted me to get married and thought I’d make a good wife. Now I’m happy to be The MRS !!”

CLICK BELOW ON THE 'Read More' icon to read the entire article...

Parineeti Chopra's Musings on Loneliness, Love, Companionship & Bollywood!

Working Out Loneliness 

With Parineeti Chopra 

I've always enjoyed the absolutely candid Parineeti Chopra, her joie de vivre, her artless sex appeal, her straight up dialogue delivery. Nearly as if she was speaking in a real life situation in front of me. Her sense of fun & comic timing I find the most attractive. I really felt she had it all, looks, humor and success. But looks can be deceptive isn't it?.............................

Parineeti Chopra’s raw, vulnerable appeal is not a put on charade, it is real. She's just what you see. No hidden meanings, no pretense, no affectations. If I was a man, I'd be in love!  I am completely taken aback- in a nice way-at her disarmingly candid admissions. She's absolutely honest when she confides about life being a tough game of survival- survival in the big bad transnational Bombay and loneliness. On her advise of how a young beautiful girl can survive through a city where loyalty, trust, camaraderie are soon to be relegated to the dinosaur age?

"Two years of surviving alone taught me to be detached and develop mental strength.”

Parineeti is now adroit at her survival tricks that didnt come easily, and it took a little knocking around to figure out the ropes- “ I recommend  you harden your skin to unnecessary criticism that can also be malicious if you have to survive and succeed in this city. I was most lost and unused to the harsh words when I was new. It used to bog me down. Now I'm learning the art of survival."

CLICK BELOW ON THE 'Read More' icon to read the entire article...